Scientist Quotes: Inspirations from Brilliant Minds (Page 4)

"I think it's great that we have organisations like Greenpeace. In a pluralistic society, we want to have people who point out all the problems that the Earth could encounter. But we need to understand that they are not presenting a full and rounded view"

Bjorn Lomborg, Scientist

"Unauthorized access to computer systems is already a serious crime in a few states and is currently being addressed in many more state legislatures as well as Congress"

Ken Thompson, Scientist

"I still have a full-time day job, which is why it took me five years to write An Ear to the Ground, and why I won't have another book finished by next week"

Ken Thompson, Scientist

"The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense"

Edsger Dijkstra, Scientist

"Object-oriented programming is an exceptionally bad idea which could only have originated in California"

Edsger Dijkstra, Scientist

"One is that the perfect garden can be created overnight, which it can't"

Ken Thompson, Scientist

"When in doubt, use brute force"

Ken Thompson, Scientist

"A man's indebtedness is not virtue; his repayment is. Virtue begins when he dedicates himself actively to the job of gratitude"

Ruth Benedict, Scientist

"The arrival of a good clown exercises a more beneficial influence upon the health of a town than of twenty asses laden with drugs"

Thomas Sydenham, Scientist

"Gout produces calculus in the kidney... the patient has frequently to entertain the painful speculation as to whether gout or stone be the worst disease. Sometimes the stone, on passing, kills the patient, without waiting for the gout"

Thomas Sydenham, Scientist

"The students that, like the wild animal being prepared for its tricks in the circus called "life", expects only training as sketched above, will be severely disappointed: by his standards he will learn next to nothing"

Edsger Dijkstra, Scientist

"Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability"

Edsger Dijkstra, Scientist

"I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created parasitic wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars"

Charles Darwin, Scientist

"A man's friendships are one of the best measures of his worth"

Charles Darwin, Scientist

"Ego is the immediate dictate of human consciousness"

Max Planck, Scientist

"Wherever the art of medicine is loved, there is also a love of humanity"

Hippocrates, Scientist

"To kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes even better than, the establishing of a new truth or fact"

Charles Darwin, Scientist

"On the ordinary view of each species having been independently created, we gain no scientific explanation"

Charles Darwin, Scientist

"Real equality is immensely difficult to achieve, it needs continual revision and monitoring of distributions. And it does not provide buffers between members, so they are continually colliding or frustrating each other"

Mary Douglas, Scientist

"I think the perception of there being a deep gulf between science and the humanities is false"

Clifford Geertz, Scientist

"If you ask almost any of them, 'Do you stand behind your theory? Is this the answer?' I think almost everyone would say, 'No, no, no. I'm just trying to expand the range of possibilities.' We really don't know what's going on"

Saul Perlmutter, Scientist

"Why are empirical questions about how the mind works so weighted down with political and moral and emotional baggage?"

Steven Pinker, Scientist

"Evolutionary psychology is one of four sciences that are bringing human nature back into the picture"

Steven Pinker, Scientist

"By exploring the political and moral colorings of discoveries about what makes us tick, we can have a more honest science and a less fearful intellectual milieu"

Steven Pinker, Scientist

"The history of the Church of Rome is a constant leakage of members into such breakaway cults, which go on splitting"

Mary Douglas, Scientist

"It is a good morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet hypothesis every day before breakfast. It keeps him young"

Konrad Lorenz, Scientist

"Our technological infrastructure alienates us from each other. No need to form a workplace community, everybody there will be out in a year or two, and so will you, looking for a better place"

Mary Douglas, Scientist

"Quite a few people have to believe something is normal before it becomes normal - a sort of 'voting' situation. But once the threshold is reached, then everyone demands to do whatever it is"

Alan Kay, Scientist

"One of my theme songs is that if you can't do it in a test tube, don't do it"

Martin Fleischmann, Scientist

"There is another common misapprehension that the magnitude scale is itself some kind of instrument or apparatus. Visitors will frequently ask to 'see the scale.'"

Charles Francis Richter, Scientist

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Famous quotes by Scientists